The FBI only recently began reporting information about federal hate crime arrests, reflecting the broader push for more comprehensive data.
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A county sheriff’s office or department might be responsible for patrolling and responding to crime in the unincorporated areas of a county or will enter into a contract with a city or town to handle law enforcement duties in their jurisdiction. In South Carolina, for example, more than 95 percent of law enforcement agencies file their reports on hate crimes.
Locally, only Stone and George counties’ sheriff departments reported a hate crime in five of the six years, the data shows.
Filing reports for the federal count is voluntary and guidelines call for reports to be submitted even if they list zero hate crimes, a signal to both the FBI and the community that the agency is paying attention to bias attacks.
Advocates say better accounting of hate crimes would increase awareness and force state and federal lawmakers to dedicate more money and resources to law enforcement training and community outreach.
However, the FBI’s definition of a hate crime for reporting purposes is not the same as proving a hate crime.
State Police spokesman Capt. David Bursten said the agency adopted an online submission system this year to “improve the quality of the data as well as submission rates” from police departments.
“For them to say there were no hate crimes in February, we know that isn’t true”, said White, 24.
Chris Paulsen, the campaign manager for the gay rights group Freedom Indiana, said crimes against LGBT residents, as well as people targeted due to their religion, ethnicity and other bias factors, go unreported every year in Indiana. Crime data in general is submitted to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which then shares the information with the FBI Uniform Crime Reports.
Despite the circumstances, the case was never counted in the nation’s annual tally of hate crimes.
Gwinnett County Sheriff’s said it was covered by the county police and didn’t have to submit the reports, although the Gwinnett County Police did not submit reports between 2009 and 2013 either.
A law requiring officers to report these crimes would be beneficial “to be able to truly monitor where we are on a spectrum of social justice”, which would help focus efforts to help alleviate the occurrence of these occurrences, she said. “I think they’re just swept under the rug to be quiet”, Eaton-Bertagnolli said, adding she thinks small-town law enforcement officials may be hesitant to classify incidents as a hate crime. After speaking with the state and learning that it would like that information, she said she would definitely submit the reports.
That’s the seventh-highest rate in the nation, which includes MS at 65 percent, Louisiana at 59 percent and in at 53 percent.
“And without a prescription, there is no healing”, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, pastor of Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. preached, said.
“It’s not that we’re not reporting, it’s the system”, said Chief Deputy Chad Willett.
Those heightened conversations around hate crimes likely result in more law enforcement training, Bell said.
There has been only one incident in the six years in question that was debated as a hate crime because the people involved were yelling derogatory names at one another, Sisemore said.
FBI Director James Comey has called on all agencies to do a more aggressive job tracking hate crimes, and also has initiated training sessions for hundreds of law enforcement officers nationwide. Under a state law, they could lose funds for failing to file reports.
Q: How are federal hate crime cases handled?
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“They’re hard to prove”, said Capt. Steve Stone of the Allen County Sheriff’s Department.
